


None More Precious Than You, My Dear

by japansace



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Buckle up, Frottage, Hand Jobs, In more ways than one, Long-Haired Victor Nikiforov, M/M, Making Out, Prince Victor Nikiforov, Swordfighting, Thief Katsuki Yuuri, because I said so, enemies to lovers to friends to enemies to friends to lovers, yes in that order
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-05-30 18:19:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15102323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/japansace/pseuds/japansace
Summary: The plan is simple: Get in, get the jewel, get out.Stealing into the prince’s bedchambers is not part of the mission. (Nor is stealing into hisbed, for that matter.)Then again, infamous jewel thief Eros never really was one for conventions.





	1. Like Citrine in Your Pocket

**Author's Note:**

> This is not the project I should be working on, but it's the idea that literally wouldn't leave me alone.
> 
> (Look, I love royalty AUs, and I love phantom thieves. This was inevitable.)

Well… This is certainly a pickle.

Yuuri has never _literally_ been caught between a rock and a hard place before. And yet, here he is: squished between two conveniently placed towers, steadily slipping against the stone on either side of him, gloved fingers scrambling for purchase—for any jutted piece or uneven surface that might offer him some solace in this time. He’d rather not end up falling into the prince’s famed rose garden, if he’s being honest with himself; the flowers are lovely, he’s sure, but roses have thorns, and to fall from this height would spell disaster indeed.

Careful, as not to tip himself off balance and find a home among the bramble, he lifts one hand from the column and digs into the side of his boot for the knife he has tucked away there. It’s mostly for show—a dull but sparkly little thing—but might do well against these stone behemoths, if he could _just…_

Yes, there: a block out of place. Yuuri drives the dagger into the soft underbelly of the tower until it’s buried deep—deep enough for him to use it as a foothold, anyway.

Now comes the tricky part. He has to let go of one of the pillars and commit to the other, thus leaving himself vulnerable if the knife decides it rather not hold. That window just tantalizingly out of reach makes the maneuver seem possible though, so Yuuri decides he’ll try his luck.

If it’s any comfort, it hasn’t failed him thus far.

All at once, he detaches himself from the leftmost tower, entrusting the jagged exterior of the knife-bearing one with his safety, clinging onto it for dear life even as the stone crumbles a little. Pebbles rain down from him in pursuit of the ground, the plip-plop of some sounding as they fall into the pond, the tick-tack of others echoing as they meet a crueler fate.

Then it’s all up to the roll of a die: the moment in which Yuuri hoists himself up, the ball of his foot pushing against the blade of the knife to leg the final stretch. And he does so, draping himself over the windowsill, then rolling over the precipice and ending up on the floor, sucking down air once he knows he’s safe like a man possessed.

It’s only when he’s properly caught his breath that he reaches back outside and grapples for the blade, his fingers meeting nothing but a groove that probably wasn’t there before, the knife nowhere to be found. It got dislodged then, Yuuri thinks. That's bad. Really bad. He’ll have to search the garden for it on the way out, lest he leave evidence.

In the meantime, where Yuuri has found himself should be within the royal family’s private chambers, what few maps he had consulted attesting to that fact. However, the trail stopped there, as this particular area was always sketchy at best, since no one outside of the king’s inner circle has ever feasted their eyes upon this part of the castle and lived to tell the tale.

Well… There is first time for everything, isn’t there?

Acclimating to the room is a new challenge; without the moon’s light from outside, the chamber is nearly pitch-black. Though, when Yuuri focuses on it, he can see that a single candle is lit behind a sheer, the fabric of which is billowing in and out with the gentle breeze allotted from the window.

And it is with a particularly strong gust that the silk parts, revealing a mere taste of what lies behind it.

There, in a flash, Yuuri sees him: the prince, curled around a book—its pages having been left open, fluttering with the draft—his long, silvery hair draped around him in fine, decadent waves. Blessedly, he’s very much asleep, his shoulders expanding, contracting with his soft breathing; and Yuuri is only just familiarizing himself with the delicacy of the prince’s eyelashes—of which are brushing against his skin, white as snow—when the canopy resumes its role, concealing him once more.

Briefly, Yuuri considers leaving just as he came: through that accursed window, down to what would surely be his death. But another option exists—one where he tiptoes past the sleeping prince, finds the illustrious Blue Eye of Nike, and trades it in for a handsome sum.

And well, Yuuri has made it this far. Might as well try, while he’s here and all.

It’s a matter of stealth then—of skating his feet across the ground, of shying away from every raised panel in the flooring. It’s a delicate dance across the tiles—and then very quickly an acrobatic stunt, as Yuuri spills across the ground, his boot having come in contact with something far greater than a mere uneven step.

Said obstacle yelps at being kicked—a hound; dear god, Yuuri has tripped over the prince’s beloved _hound_ —and his owner stirs at the commotion, untangling himself from his linens to see what all the fuss is about.

Yuuri forgets to breathe. He’s spilled before the prince’s bed, disheveled, wide-eyed—not to mention a _thief_ ; the Blue Eye of Nike seems further away than ever, he’s lost his favorite knife to the shrubbery, and to top it all off, he’s hurt an innocent dog in the process. Could things get any worse? 

Then Victor opens his mouth to presumably summon the guards, and Yuuri realizes that yes—yes, it very much can.

“ _Don’t_ ,” he pleads, slapping a hand to the prince’s mouth. “Please. I beg of you.”

The prince—of all things—licks his hand, which causes Yuuri to pull back out of nothing if not visceral disgust. But instead of attempting a second call—as Yuuri thought he really ought to do, at this point—what comes out of the man’s mouth instead is, “Wow, have you come all this way to seduce me?”

Yuuri sputters, retreating back as far as his trembling legs will allow. “W-what?”

“Because if so, I accept.”

“I didn’t—you _what_?”

“I accept.” Victor props his chin in the crux of his palm, fluttering dove-white lashes down at the other. “I’m quite pleased with your progress, thus far. You’ve managed to scale the tower. Doesn’t that warrant at least a kiss?” He pouts, as though the prospect of not being allowed this simple pleasure would genuinely shatter his heart.

“You—“ Yuuri inhales a bit of air—just enough to get his wits about him. “Perhaps it is not my place, Your Highness, but you seem awfully unconcerned that a stranger has stolen into your chambers.”

Victor shrugs, as though the thought hadn’t occurred to him. “Happens all the time, in my stories.”

“This is not a fairy tale—“

“I know.” And suddenly Victor is looking far sharper, reaching under his bedframe to procure a rather impressive looking blade that was presumably fastened to the post—and Yuuri knows it to be impressive, as he gets to examine it firsthand as it’s pressed unceremoniously against his jugular, his own shaken expression reflected back to him in the steel. “Yes, I know that quite well.” The prince keeps him there, tipping the weapon up as he lifts himself from the bed, silken nightshirt swaying with the movement like a soldier’s cloak. “And if I wanted you dead, you would be. But I rather have fun with you. I’m quite bored, you see.”

Yuuri hardly has the time to process the words before the room is stormed, a half dozen guards surrounding both Yuuri and the prince—and the prince’s beloved pup, though he knows not what a precarious position he’s in.

“Stand down,” Yuuri hears one of them say, and he finds it quite ironic indeed, considering he is neither standing nor threatening the prince in any way; in fact, it is the prince who is doing so: looming, his sword on quite familiar terms indeed with Yuuri’s rabbiting pulse.

“No, I’ve got it under control—“ Victor starts, which is just enough of an opening for Yuuri to make a truly terrible decision.

His leg comes up to kick the blade out of Victor’s hands—and out of his hands it goes, skittering across the floor, a metallic ringing turning all the guards’ heads. Yuuri ignores it for favor of making it to the door—managing, miraculously, not to trip a second time over the hound—and slams the thing behind him, taking the stairs two, three at a time.

He expects a commotion behind him, but it never comes—or rather, it never comes closer to him. It stays far back in Victor’s room, what seems to be an argument breaking out but not venturing outside the walls. Since Yuuri is more grateful than curious, he carries on until he’s at the ground floor, then flees into the garden, over the fence the way he came.

It is only when he’s far outside the castle gates that he dares to consider his near-capture—of just what kind of force could have made the guards take pause rather than pursue after him.

After a moment’s consideration, he decides not to question it and begins the journey home, lighter, somehow, coming out of the palace than he was coming into it.

* * *

It’s far beyond a reasonable hour when Yuuri is roused by a hand shaking him awake.

“Yuuri, come quick! You need to see this!”

Since he is so rarely disturbed by Phichit—who is good and kind and lets him wander around listlessly, uselessly the day after a heist—Yuuri rubs the sleep from his eyes to placate his friend. Phichit tries to drag him into the street outright, to which Yuuri squawks indignantly, having the presence of mind to tear a shawl off the wall, reminding Phichit as he drapes it over his head that it was just yesterday when he was declared a wanted man.

Phichit pays his grievances no mind, grasping his wrist to pull him towards the city center—towards the _castle._ Yuuri simply yelps, pulling the hood down over his eyes more so as he’s ungracefully dragged into the receiving hall.

It’s a grand one, that chamber. It’s a place where the king would normally sit before his subjects in a public forum of sorts and receive both the people’s praises and their gripes. But since their king is far too concerned with securing the border—having been on the front lines with his men for the better part of a year now, maintaining their most recent stronghold—Prince Victor takes his place upon the throne. And indeed, said prince is upholding his sacred duty when Yuuri and Phichit blend into the crowd, inching ever closer to get a glimpse of His Highness in all his glory.

And glorious he is, properly endowed with a princely circlet, pearlescent dewdrops of crystal and silver having been woven painstakingly into the plaits of his hair. It’s almost dazzling enough, in fact, to distract away from how he is idly turning something over in hands as he listens to a concern, occasionally nodding but otherwise watching the gleam off said object catch the light at particular intervals, casting rainbows across the castle walls.

Suddenly, Yuuri knows why Phichit has brought him here.

“ _That’s my knife_ ,” Yuuri hisses.

“Ah, I thought so.” Phichit considers, a finger to his chin. “You can even see your initials on it, when he turns it certain ways.”

Beside him, Yuuri goes sheet-white.

“So?” Phichit poses. “Are you going to try to get it back?" 

“How could I?” Yuuri wonders absently, watching the prince’s mouth pull into a moue at something said to him, the knife ever turning in his hands.

“Well, you got in once. Who’s to say you couldn’t do it again?”

Yuuri shoots him a look. “I think I’ve pushed my luck far enough.”

“But you can’t just leave it with him,” Phichit argues, annoyingly reasonable. “What if someone notices the initials? Or tracks down where it’s from? You could be found out.”

Privately, Yuuri thinks that if he couldn’t find the Blue Eye of Nike, he doesn’t stand much of a chance in finding his dagger either, if Victor is so keen as to hide it from him. Still, it is dangerous for him to leave it with the prince, as while the risk of exposure is minimal—the infamous phantom thief Eros having never left a shred of evidence behind him before the previous night—the more there is about him in the public sphere, the more perilous his raids become.

Since he’s neither in the market for a noose around his neck nor blessed with an abundance of time or funds—his reasons for relieving people of their valuables extending beyond a simple love for thieving—he finds himself at odds, then resolute when he comes to realize what he must do.

It seems, once again, that he will be paying his prince a visit.

* * *

 

Yuuri half-expects the way he stole in to be littered with guards the second time through, but paradoxically, it seems clearer than ever, free of guards when Yuuri scales the outer wall—and even so later, when he’s clearing the inner. The idea that he is perhaps falling into a trap occurs to him somewhere outside the rose garden, but it isn’t confirmed until he’s well within it.

“Oh, welcome,” Victor purrs, sat astride a stone bench in the cleared center of his garden. It’s the dead of night—nearly dawn—but he looks unbothered by this fact and unaffected by time; he may as well have been atop the throne from that morning, with how he is still dressed in all his regalia, still twirling Yuuri’s knife between his fingers, blade catching the moonlight. “I’m pleased you received my message. I thought I’d have to wait a few days longer for the news to get to you. Do you perhaps live nearby?”

Well, this isn’t exactly how Yuuri thought things would go, but at least Victor has eliminated the need for him to search out his knife.

“I have questions,” Yuuri begins, which is, perhaps, the dullest thing he could have said.

“I’m sure you do.” Victor holds his blade between his forefingers, spinning it around until it is facing frontward, Yuuri’s initials staring back at him. “I do as well. Like why ‘Eros’? It clearly isn't your name. Not if this is anything to go by.”

Yuuri stalks closer, careful, as not to startle the man. He’s already underestimated him once, and though he’s armed with what Yuuri knows to be only decorative, he rather not be struck with something blunt either, if he can avoid it. “Your Highness,” he appeals, choosing to go the diplomatic route, “I would very much like that back.”

“I’m sure you would,” Victor lilts once more, looking down into the weapon’s sheen. He makes deliberate eye contact with Yuuri, then orders, “Close your eyes for me.”

“W-what? Why would I—?”

“I _told_ you,” Victor groans. “If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead. So close your eyes.”

Against his better judgement, Yuuri closes his eyes—and covers them with his hands, in a showing of good faith. There’s rustling before him—in Victor’s direction—and Yuuri is just about to call off this silly little game when Victor tells him he’s finished.

Slowly, Yuuri lowers his hands. The prince is exactly where he was, albeit with his legs crossed this time at the ankles. “I… don’t understand. What was the point of that?”

A smile pulls at the prince’s lips. “Tell me, Eros: Where is your knife?”

Ah. _That._ Gone, by the looks of it. “Where—?”

Victor curls a finger coyly. “Come over here, and you might find it.”

A challenge, Yuuri supposes, if ever he was issued one. He begins a stalk across the gravel, calculated and slow. “Careful there, Your Highness. You wouldn’t want to tempt more than you can handle.”

Victor scoffs. “ _Please_. I know you want me.”

Yuuri halts before the other to gaze down upon him. “And who wouldn’t want you?” It’s hardly a whisper—a confession, a mere hint of suggestion—but it rouges the prince’s pretty, pink cheeks, parts his teasing mouth, and that’s all the invitation Yuuri needs before he’s taking a knee upon the bench, cradling the man’s face with a hand to turn him just the right angle to leave him wanting and breathless.

For all his bravado, the prince startles at the contact; though he soon enough melts, reaching out to touch Yuuri too, tilt him so that the kiss may reach new depths. Yuuri licks into him with a blazing warmth—his heart beating wildly upon his lips—and Victor responds by leading Yuuri forward, the two falling into the sprawl, one on top of another, Victor’s leg curling around the other’s calf to keep him there.

Then Yuuri’s mouth is moving to his neck—searing against his pulse—and he bites a claim into the prince, far above where propriety would allow. Yuuri soothes the sting with his tongue, but it’s all in vain; Victor can’t help a breathy moan, thinking of how he will have to cover that up— _if_ he can cover it up—and if he cannot, how the council will look on him, how they will be able to map this man’s actions upon him by following the trail set into his skin.

The nips travel lower and lower—an aimless journey, a wandering track—until Victor is arching into them, begging, wordlessly, for Yuuri to give up on his current endeavor, attempt something bolder, brasher; but just as Victor is about to abandon his pride—plead in earnest, if Yuuri so demands it—everything all at once stops.

“You don’t have it." 

Reluctantly, Victor pries his eyes open. “Oh? And what don’t I have?”

“My knife. I’ve checked everywhere.”

“You haven’t—“  
  
“I have. Unless you want me to check again?”

Victor blinks, acclimating to this information. Indeed, his clothing is in disarray—wrenched this way and that—and it is with some amount of mortification but far more admiration that he realizes that Yuuri’s hands have been resting on his outer thighs, teasing the hems of his stockings for quite some time. “Ah, I see. So you have done a thorough search.”

Yuuri leans over Victor, bracketing him in place with an elbow beside each ear. “Have you been playing with me, Your Highness? That’s not very fair, you know.”

Victor’s breath hastens with the air blown across his cooling lips, the near-promise of a continuation. “I threw it behind me into the bushes the second you closed your eyes.”

At his confession, Yuuri lowers his head to deliver a peck, as though rewarding Victor for his good behavior. “Cheater,” he says, almost admiringly. “You rigged everything from the start, didn’t you?” He lifts off Victor then to retrieve his possession, leaving his prince bereft.

Victor assumes he will come back—then promptly balks at Yuuri heading towards the exit after having slipped the dagger into the outside of his boot. “Wait, where are you going?”

Yuuri turns to look over his shoulder, somehow managing to appear genuinely confused. “Home?”

“You… don’t want me.” Perhaps it was initially meant to be a question, but it rings statement by the end.

Yuuri examines the ground with faint interest. “It is not a matter of want. I _need_ the Blue Eye of Nike. That is all.”

The words hang heavily between them.

Then, slowly—inexplicably—Victor’s lip curls upward. “Oh, is that all? Well, I can certainly help with that.”

Yuuri huffs a breath. “Please, Your Highness. You don’t have to be so cruel about it.”

“No, really!” the prince claims, near-hysterical. “I will give it to you willingly! If only—”

Yuuri turns around proper. “If only…?”

Victor composes himself, a familiar air of royalty settling over him. “I will forfeit it—but not for nothing in return. So I propose a deal: Every time you come to visit me, I’ll give you one hint as to how you can obtain it.”

“That’s quite a steep price,” Yuuri observes, coming before the other. He reaches out a thumb to swipe at Victor’s still-slick bottom lip. “And what is to stop me from simply finding it and taking it for myself?”

Victor swallows, though he doesn’t shy, nor does his gaze ever waver. “I can assure you with utmost certainty that you’ll never find it without my help.”

Yuuri considers this. Doubts it. Then considers it again. “Well then,” he challenges, “let’s hear it: my first hint. I did visit you, didn’t I?”

A smile encroaches on the prince’s careful countenance. “Very well then, since I suppose you’ve earned it. Here is your first hint: It is somewhere in this palace.”

Yuuri hums, low and contemplative, even as he continues to prod at the corner of Victor’s mouth. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Not a very good hint, if you’ll allow me to say so.”

“I am capable of better,” Victor claims, licking out to taste the pad of Yuuri’s thumb. “Perhaps next time, if you give me something better, I, too, shall feel compelled to match you in quality.”

Despite himself, Yuuri’s cheeks heat at the implication. He draws his hand back, blind to the way Victor nearly chases after the touch, a single aborted motion in a near-endless sea of composure. “Well… then I bid you a good evening, Your Highness.”

“Morning, more like,” Victor jibes. “But the same to you, Eros.” He winks. “Until next time.”

When the prince rises to leave, Yuuri is struck by how little of a lasting impact he’s had on the man. He’s still all straight lines and hard angles, the creases of his robe disentangling, falling back over his legs as though Yuuri hadn’t rifled through them like drawers. But then Yuuri catches a hint of that budding bruise on Victor’s neck—of which is threatening to burst into blooms like one of the prince’s beloved roses—and he thinks, perhaps, that this all wasn’t just a dream concocted by one too many sleepless nights toiling over his plans.

Still, he has to be sure.

It’s a long, winding road back, Yuuri stumbling like a man severely blitzed out of his mind. He considers it a miracle when he falls against his residence without having been picked up by the royal guard, brought in for questioning, then subsequent booking.

“What happened to you?” Phichit asks when he swings the front door open, Yuuri slumping into the entry, his only pillar of support having been swept out from under him.

Yuuri rolls onto his back to extract the knife from his boot. “What does this look like to you?”

“Your knife?”

“Thought so.” He tosses an arm over his eyes, the dagger dropping from his fingers, clattering against the floor. “I’m in trouble, Phichit.”

“Oh?” Phichit says, kneeling beside his friend’s fallen form. “Do tell.”

“Have you ever seduced a prince by accident?”

Silence answers him.

Then— “I’m going back to bed.” 

That, Yuuri thinks, sounds like an _excellent_ idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~There is so much foreshadowing in this chapter, oh my goooooddd ~~~~~~
> 
> This chapter's gemstone is citrine: a stone of luck and good financial fortune.


	2. Like Rubies Around Your Wrist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow I forgot to say in the first chapter’s notes of this that a member of royalty entering into a relationship with an infamous jewel thief is, surprisingly, [based off a true story](http://www.unofficialroyalty.com/september-30-1898-birth-of-princess-charlotte-of-monaco-duchess-of-valentinois/). Yeah, Princess Charlotte of Monaco Did That™. I actually got the idea for this story when someone off-handedly mentioned it on TV during the last British royal wedding. 
> 
> But if you click the link and do some research, you can quickly tell that I took the premise and nothing else (except one other small detail that I imprinted on Vitya, but no spoilers.) Still, thought it was worth a mention.
> 
> So with that being said, today’s gemstone is ruby: a gemstone of energy and passion.

Yuuri doesn’t go back to Victor right away.

It’s entirely incidental. He comes across a tip—a careless whisper, the tongue loosened with mull—and he’s off to pilfer Kore’s Wish, a shiny little trinket that Yuuri trades for—quite frankly—much more than it’s worth, the money tucked into a missive where it’ll be sent away, as it always is.

Truthfully, the heist was a bit too easy for Yuuri’s taste. It was just his luck that the jewel was in transit after having been sold to its new owner; it made it all too simple to have Phichit stop their carriage—offer his wears—as Yuuri rifled their luggage, found the gem tucked between the folds of a lady’s petticoat, and stashed it away while Phichit was still counting out their change. Two business transactions for the price of one, really. And no one was ever the wiser, the owners departing with a bolt of fine fabric and a smile on their faces—until, of course, they stopped for a rest when they had cleared the capital and found themselves one gemstone lesser.

A tragic thing, that.

So Yuuri doesn’t meet the prince the next day or even the day after that—because he’s _busy_ and certainly not because he’s terrified of what will happen when he meets the man a second time.

Yes, quite.

But as the sun sinks on the third day—the sky setting itself auburn, then a cool, steely gray come nightfall—Yuuri feels something akin to guilt settle in the center of his chest.

He feels an obligation—of sorts—to at least make his prince _aware_ of his continued presence in the area, even if he has not yet come to a decision regarding his little challenge. It seems only right—and fitting, besides—considering all Victor implied he desired from him was a bit of company. (Though admittedly, Yuuri struggles to comprehend doing something as mundane as sitting down for tea with the man, but a “visit” implicated all sorts; perhaps he would be open to the suggestion, ridiculous as it seemed…? It was worth the try.)

And if he wasn’t, well…

There were other pleasures, of course, to pass the time.

* * *

“The door was open, you know.”

The prince doesn’t even deign to lift his head as he says it, flicking a page over in one of his storybooks—lying on his belly, his legs kicking back and forth with practiced nonchalance—while Yuuri negotiates for breath beneath Victor’s window.

“And you—you couldn’t have told me?” Yuuri gasps, still on his back, his chest heaving.

“How was I to? I don’t know where you live.”

“Could have left me a note…?”

“Oh, yes, that would have gone over well. ‘Dear Phantom Thief Eros, I’ve left my chambers unlocked, and I’m waiting for you in a pool of rose petals! Hurry up and ravish me, won’t you? Sincerely yours, Prince Victor.’” He laughs—cruelly—then turns another page. “Surely the guards would’ve allowed that and _not_ arrested you on the spot.”

“That is _it._ ”

Yuuri hoists himself up, stalking over to Victor’s bed. He flips the prince over—the book falling, careening to the floor—as Yuuri pins the man’s wrists to the mattress.

“Oh no, you’ve caught me.” Victor gives a mock struggle. “Whatever shall I do…?”

“This isn’t a game, Your Highness.”

“Isn’t it though?”

Yuuri’s brows furrow at this. He relinquishes his hold with a huff, coming to sit upon the edge of the bed, and rakes a hand through his hair. “You are… ridiculous.”

Victor blinks at his wrists—at where they were thrown against his chest—as though they’re entirely foreign to him. He doesn’t bother to move from where he’s been placed, nearly going cross-eyed with the effort it takes to view Yuuri from his current angle. “So no ravishing?”

“Not—“ Yuuri’s fingers clench. “Not like this. I wouldn’t do that to you, Your Highness.”

“Hmm.” Victor goes to sit up, snapping the spine of his book shut and laying it astride the bedside table. “In that case, you can sit there and let me complain.”  
  
“Complain—?”

Victor grasps at his shirt collar, pulling it back to reveal a near-perfect indent of Yuuri’s teeth. “It hasn’t faded at all! Do you know how hard it is to talk of war politics when the entire room is imagining what you look like being fucked against a wall?”

“ _I didn’t_ —“

“God, I wish you would have. At least then I could have been afforded the satisfaction of confirming their suspicions, if only to get them a little less judgmental and a little more jealous.”

“Your Highness—!”

Victor huffs, flipping his hair over the one shoulder, shrouding the mark. “ _Apologize_ ,” he demands, though it sounds less princely and more petulant, a child demanding justice after a thorough tattling to the headmaster.

Yuuri can hardly find his tongue. “F-for what?”

Victor rolls his eyes, reaching again for his book. “Forget it,” he grumbles, flopping back into a leisurely sprawl, thumbing for the last familiar paragraph. “You are,” he punctuates, each word more biting than the one before, “ _by far_ the worst thief I have ever come across.”

There are too many variables to analyze in that sentence, so of course Yuuri’s mind goes for the most obvious, which is, incidentally, the most stupid: “And how many thieves have you come across, exactly?”

Victor groans into the pages of his book.

* * *

Yuuri doesn’t anticipate being dragged into the sparring room the next time he comes to call—nor does he expect a saber to be tossed at him, toed up into Victor’s hands from where it was left abandoned in the center of the dueling arena.

He catches it clumsily, the sting of the foil burning like a brand upon the inside of his palms.

“What is—?”

“We’re going to be fighting today.”

Well now. This is unexpectedly direct.

“If you don’t care for my company any longer, there’s more tactful ways to go about it—“

“ _God_ , you’re dense.” Victor kicks another rapier into his own hands, giving it a cursory swipe. “No, this has nothing to do with your… lack of engagement.” Yuuri feels grateful, almost, that the prince seems to at least be _attempting_ to spare his feelings. “This is entirely because of that _display_ you put on the day you first stole into my rooms.”

“I—“

“ _Abysmal._ You were all limbs and no grace. _Makkachin_ could have taken you down, with a quick enough strike.”

“I got away, didn’t I?" 

“Because of my mercy.” Victor cuts him with a cold stare. “I stopped my guards. You’d no doubt be hanging in the courtyard had I not intervened.”

Yuuri feels shame settle upon his face, hot and heavy. “Forgive me, _Your Highness_ , but not all of us are born under such fortunate stars. Some of us don’t _get_ to be tutored privately in the combat arts.”

Victor whips his saber towards the ground, the air whirling, whistling under the strain of his maneuver. “Why do you think I’m standing here, Eros? For fun? Now get into position. I’m going to demonstrate to you a proper match.”

Yuuri goes to do so, tapping the side of Victor’s blade with his own. “Then I expect to be impressed.”

* * *

 

The first day, Yuuri isn’t allowed a sword at all. He learns of this rather abruptly when he goes to demonstrate his level of skill only to be thwarted by a swift strike to the inside of the wrist, Yuuri’s entire arm rattling with the force of it, his saber clattering to the floor.

“All wrong,” Victor deems it, bending his own foil, agitatedly, between two hands. “I see now we will have to start from the ground up.” He directs Yuuri outside of the ring, with the tip of his blade. “Over there. Watch, and don’t you dare take your eyes off me.”

Yuuri doesn’t. It turns out he couldn’t, even if he wanted to.

Victor fights, well… Victor fights like he does everything else: with practiced grace, meticulous and poised. He fights more like a _dancer_ than anything, his core always center, the balls of his feet always grounded. Everything else is fair game though, his arms stretching in wide arcs, the sting of his blade never far behind.

When Yuuri returns for a second lesson, he’s rewarded with the return of his sword privileges.

“Like this,” Victor says, falling into position, and it’s all Yuuri can do to follow.

So it goes: practice, well into the night—and then the day—before coming home to Phichit, being useful for perhaps a few moments before falling asleep at the loom, errant strands of wool striping his cheek.

In between, he diversifies his schedule with bouts of books: ones he’d lifted off merchants, others he’d obtained legitimately—if not for the convenience of knowing what you are going to get ahead of time—and a third, eclectic section of genre fiction he’d borrowed from an eccentric neighbor.

The first two are obvious: He has a lot to learn, if he is to not end up being an utter waste of the prince’s time. So he pours over all he can find regarding the art of the blade—and some other weapons, just to make things interesting for himself—reading them between shifts in Phichit’s studio, when the shop enters its occasional quiet interval.

The last bit of reading he comes to pick up is harder to explain—and he would no doubt be mortified to do so, if he was pressed on the issue. Because they’re more of the… _erotic_ type, Yuuri approaching them as you would a particularly difficult puzzle, trying to parse out what exactly the prince is wanting from him and how he should go about delivering it.

It has him perplexed more than anything, often turning the books sideways and forwards again, wondering if he’d perhaps missed a passage somewhere along the way, as he was _quite sure_ the featured couple had been standing in the last scene but had somehow transitioned to performing the act lying down by the next.

Perhaps, Yuuri thinks, he should be investing in more quality materials.

And of course, there are Yuuri’s promised “hints” in between all of this.

Honestly, Yuuri feels as though he’s learned _less_ about the Blue Eye of Nike than he knew going in from the outset. And he doesn’t turn a blind eye to Victor’s teasing little smirks each time he gives these bits, as though daring Yuuri to impress him _next time_ , should he be craving something more useful.

Sometimes they are _almost_ decent, when the prince seems satisfied with the amount of sweat he has dripping off Yuuri that day. But it’s never enough—never enough for Yuuri to actually have an idea on where to start searching, should he ever reach that point.

Not that he’s afforded the time to worry about such things now.

“ _Enough_ ,” Victor says one unseasonably warm evening, and Yuuri is so used to the perpetual “ _again_ ”s that he falls into position on instinct, flailing when he comes to realize his error. “We’re done for tonight.”

“So soon?” Yuuri questions, twirling the rapier idly in his hand.

Victor shrugs, though the motion conceals an underlying energy fluttering in his veins, his fingers quaking as they go to press the kinks out of his neck. “Come back tomorrow. I’ll have something better for you then.”

“Hint?” Yuuri prompts as he places his foil aside, knowing his prince by now to be oh-so forgetful.

“Oh,” Victor hums, as he always does; this time however, his expression doesn’t pinch under the scrutiny. “Never mind that. I plan to give you something far greater next we meet.”

Yuuri considers this. “That wasn’t part of our arrangement,” he decides upon, tapping his foot, the crunch of arena lines deafening under heel. “Hint now. The other thing can come later.”

“My, you are bold.” But the prince’s reprimand feels far more fond than biting. He crosses over the marks in the sand, coming to grasp at Yuuri’s chin. “If you are so very confident, then I’ll barter two hints tomorrow _and_ a gift, just for my favorite pupil.”

Yuuri swallows, rooted to the ground by the pressure of Victor’s thumb upon his lip. “I’ll hold you to it, Your Highness.”

So he returns home that night emptyhanded but finds he hardly minds. He doesn’t sleep—doesn’t read either—but simply holds his face in his hands until the sun breaks through his windows, forcing him up again.

Night can’t fall fast enough.

When Yuuri at last meets Victor once more, the prince is touting a long, slender case, the insignia of the royal crest imprinted upon it, prominent against the lacquered wood. Yuuri’s heart jumps to his throat at the sight.

His fingers twitch at his sides. “Is that…?”

Victor glances at the case, cursory; then realization dawns over his expression. “Ah—no, Eros. I’m sorry to disappoint.” He approaches Yuuri, his strides long and even. A hand hovers over the container’s latch. “Even so… I think you will come to find this, in time, far more useful to you.”

The fasten is undone, the resulting click echoing throughout the hall. Yuuri is nearly blinded at his first glimpse of what lies within.

A sword—a _real_ sword by the looks of it, not simply one of Victor’s various sparring foils. Its blade is so starkly silver that it is almost white, polished so bright it shines even in the low light of the arena. Nary a hint of a fingerprint mars its sheen, tip to hilt. The handle is much the same as the blade, though different in key areas: a gold is flecked along the ridge, cool and wispy like a winter gust. It swirls and glistens around the midway point—where a swordsman’s hand would normally lie—and the mark of the royal family is nestled within the center of the flurry, the three snowflakes of House Nikiforov lovingly carved upon the steel.

“Not exactly subtle,” Yuuri finds himself saying, though it’s breathed in reverence, his eyes wide, wandering here and back again in wonder.

Victor chuckles, the case shaking with it. “Well, considering the royal family’s official stance on thieving, perhaps we would consider that a good thing. However…” His fingers lift the fine varnish the blade is resting upon, revealing a plain black scabbard. “I thought of your concerns ahead of time and requested this be included." 

“Oh, Your Highness…” He shakes his head, perhaps belatedly. “This is all too much.”

“It is my royal decree as crown prince that you accept this.” Victor holds it out to Yuuri, in offering. “Besides which, you’ve earned it. I consider you graduated from our lessons now.”

Yuuri’s eyes cut away from the gift to Victor. “Really? I’m as good as you now?”

“Oh, god no,” Victor laughs. “You’re what I would consider competent. But that’s that, and this is this. Come on then,” he says, edging the case ever closer. “Give it a try, won’t you?”

Yuuri nibbles on the inside of his cheek, reaching out for the sword with careful fingers. One hand clasps the handle; the other slides under the blade. He lifts it up and out, running a thumb along the fuller, the mark of Nikiforov, nail catching at the ridges.

“Careful,” Victor murmurs, covering Yuuri’s hands with his own. “This isn’t a toy like your little putty knife. It’s meant for real combat.”

A stitch enters Yuuri’s brow. “It occurs to me,” he says, mirth injected into his tone, “that you are only better arming me for robbing you when I eventually figure out your little riddle.”

To his credit, Victor tries admirably to maintain his straightest face. “Forgive me if I do not hold my breath.”

Yuuri steps back, holding the blade out in starting position to assess it; the weapon is a good weight for him, far more robust than a fencing foil but not so much so that it hinders Yuuri, leaves him feeling handicapped. “Are you sure about that, Your Highness?” He gives a swipe, light on the balls of his feet. “I think you underestimate me. I think if you and I had a bout, you’d come to find that we are evenly matched." 

Victor raises an eyebrow at this, setting the sword container on its side. “Oh? Is that so?”

“Yes.”

“If that’s the case…” The prince tosses a practice blade at him, which is caught deftly in Yuuri’s unoccupied hand. “Let’s have one then, shall we? I’m sorry to say however we will be returning to our foils, eager though as I know you are to use the real thing. You’ll have to forgive me. Sore muscles and the occasional scrape is one thing, but I’ll have quite the troubled time indeed if I’m to try to talk my way out of a stabbing.”

A smile pulls at Yuuri’s lips. “Making peace with your inevitable defeat already?”

“Mm.” Victor takes up a sword himself. “You wish.”

They meet each other upon the stage on opposite sides, weapons in hand.

“How many points?” Yuuri prompts, his voice raised to carry over the distance.

“Just one.” Yuuri thinks he sees Victor smirk from across the way. “In a real fight, you only get one chance. So we will be playing to one.”

Yuuri rolls his shoulders. “Fine by me.”

They lift their sabers as one.

Victor’s lips part, tone conveying every inch of the prince within: “Play.”

There’s a careful advance by Victor: approaching, then hedging, making progress but never in such a way that it leaves him open. Yuuri is less cautious—more eager to cover the distance, leave him adequate space to maneuver. When they are finally within range of each other, it’s Yuuri who has the advantage, over the center line.

The first crossing of swords results in a ringing of steel, sharp against their ears as Victor guides Yuuri’s strike harmlessly over his shoulder.

“You’re still so green,” Victor remarks. On the evade, he flips his sword around, using the hilt to hit Yuuri squarely in the chest; the latter stumbles—the wind having been cleanly knocked out of him—but manages to parry only just as the tip of the prince’s sword comes back with a vengeance. “You only see the field, the weapons at hand. There is so much more to this environment you aren’t privy to.”

Yuuri wheezes, shuffling back to get his bearings. From afar, he notes a stark strand of the other’s hair has escaped the clutches of his otherwise perfectly coiffed bun, clinging to the inside of the man’s neck.

His negligence isn’t taken to kindly, the prince capitalizing on the moment Yuuri’s eyes wander to slap the sword from its defensive position before him; Yuuri nearly loses his grip with the bite of the sting upon his fingers, his shoulder straining to draw his blade back before him. He manages to catch what would have been Victor’s final strike.

“Sorry,” Yuuri huffs, form rife with signs of overexertion. “I was just thinking… about what I will get, if I win.”

“Aren’t you greedy?” Victor smirks, though he is not entirely unaffected; more threads of silver have unraveled, resting upon his forehead. “Perhaps we shall cross that bridge when we get to it, hmm? Or if we should ever.” He punctuates this by advancing, making a move to trip Yuuri with an inside sweep of the leg. It catches the heel of Yuuri’s boot—knocking the thief unbalanced—but when Victor’s tip comes to hit the dead center of Yuuri’s chest, the strike is halted by a gloved hand wrapped around the base, Yuuri’s own foil having been discarded upon the field.

The result is that Yuuri is suspended, spared a tumble only by the death grip he has upon Victor’s weapon.

The prince’s eyes narrow. “Eros? What is—?” He tries to pull his rapier from Yuuri’s hold only to be met with staunch resistance. Yuuri utilizes the confusion to dig into his boot—the one still high above the ground—and tightens his grip on Victor’s sword, pulling himself close enough to drag the edge of his knife through the bind in Victor’s hair.

They both stumble back: Victor, in reaction to being blinded, whited out by the flurry of his own hair, and Yuuri, in surrendering his hold on Victor, diving to retrieve his weapon.

Yuuri doesn’t give his prince a chance to recover.

He whips his blade against Victor’s—then again and again, however unnecessary. The prince staggers back with each blow, one hand coming to bat at the hair in his face, the other bringing his foil back in position each time Yuuri slashes it away. 

“Eros—“

 _Shink._ A step back.

“—you—“

 _Shink._ Another.

“—dropped your—”

 _Clang._ Two more.

“—so it’s _over_ —!”

“No,” Yuuri says, unyielding. He chases him straight off the sparring stage—far beyond the line where Victor would have had to admit defeat, in a proper contest—until the prince’s back is to the wall.

Yuuri drives his foil into the barrier—at Victor’s sightline—and pokes the man in the chest, just above the heart. “I win.”

Victor is left gasping, eyes darting from the steel beside his head to the finger pressed against his person. “You cheated,” he breathes, “on multiple levels. Dropped your weapon. Used another. And I swear, if I’m missing _one strand of hair_ —“

“You said so yourself: that this was a ‘real fight.’ There are no rules in a real fight.” Yuuri draws his finger up Victor’s sternum, rooting a hand in his flowing hair. “I used my environment, as you instructed me to. If you wish to blame anyone, blame yourself. You are too excellent a teacher.” Victor gasps as Yuuri’s fingers pull him taut. “So then? What is my prize?”

Victor’s blade clatters against the ground.

The first press of lips is medial, but Yuuri immediately surges forward to push Victor back into the masonry—just to hear that hitch in his breath, see his eyes go wide, then half-lidded, the pupils becoming dark and cloying. Yuuri finds that he’d missed this—missed this a lot more than he was willing to admit—in its blooming warmth, the wet slide of them. He’s keen to place another bite upon that pale column of neck that is so cruelly unmarred now, and the mere thought of it has him panting, eager to prove to those stiff council members in their ivory towers that Yuuri Katsuki can and will deliver—

But before that, Victor has him caught, cupped around the ass to grind Yuuri’s hips into his own, and Yuuri gasps at it: the friction between them, the sparks that burst behind his eyes. Victor bites Yuuri’s lip with his own quirk of the mouth, delighting in the modicum of control, of taking Yuuri off guard.

The marks can wait. Yuuri needs Victor _now._

Peeling back a glove, he fumbles for the ties of Victor’s trousers, shaking but growing steadily bolder when Victor arches into the motion, throwing an arm around Yuuri’s neck in invitation.

“What happened to your reservations?” Victor whispers, half in jest, half with genuine interest.

“Shut up,” Yuuri threatens, tone trembling, “or I may just remember them yet." 

At the first touch to his member, Victor’s head falls back against the stone. “God, the _nerve_ of you sometimes, Eros—“

Somewhere deep down in Yuuri’s psyche, a part of him laughs in hysterics at the mere idea of him having any nerves—much less setting them against his prince—but the other part that prefers the current arrangement of his head attached to his shoulders smothers the former.

He’s a warm and steady weight in Yuuri’s hand—beautiful besides—and Yuuri has to bite into his own lip not to act too rashly as he watches his fingers swallow the head of Victor’s cock each time he rocks his arm forward. Still, he cannot help a little twitch of his own hips, merely encouraged when Victor draws him closer.

“Like this,” Victor says, positioning Yuuri against him; Yuuri’s hand is ensconced in the middle, but Victor manages to work around it, deftly undoing his ties like Yuuri could not.

He hisses at the first hint of cool air against his heated skin.

Victor holds them together, and the first pull has Yuuri slapping both hands against the wall, scrabbling for purchase as his knees nearly buckle beneath him. The effect is only intensified when Victor sucks a mark into the line of Yuuri’s jaw—in petty revenge, Yuuri guesses, based on how his lips press a smile there as well.

Ah, if it’s going to be like _that_ —

Yuuri replaces Victor’s hand with his own, picking up the slack where the prince was contented to take his—and by extension, their—time.

His forehead falls against Yuuri’s. “ _Eros_ —“

Fuck, Yuuri is going to tell him his name. Fuck, _fuck_ —

He quickens his pace even further to distract himself from spilling his guts—telling all his secrets—if Victor will only promise to say his real name as he did the name Eros: with his tongue curling around the “r,” like it’s the sweetest sound he’s ever heard.

He’s so invested in the fantasy that he startles when Victor comes with a choked whine, Yuuri’s hand becoming warm and wet with the release. It’s that—and Victor himself, still riding his high against him—that pushes Yuuri off the edge into his own abyss, releasing his grip around them to grasp at the prince’s cloak, if only to keep him on his feet.

A silence befalls them, save for their labored breaths.

Against Victor’s skin, Yuuri can’t help a grin. “I win,” he says, lifting his head to look at the other, “ _again_.”

Victor manages a smile through his gasps. “And I submit to you,” he huffs, “that you cheated, just as you did before.”

“Mm.” He drops his head back against Victor, nuzzling the juncture between neck and shoulder. “We’ll call it a draw.”

Victor chuckles, patting the back of Yuuri’s head in a no-doubt sarcastic fashion. “If that helps you sleep at night.”

“It does, thank you.”

“Then by all means.”

They tuck themselves away—which is far more embarrassing than Yuuri had anticipated—and wipe up the mess best they can, though the sparring hall doesn’t boast many resources for such an activity.

It’s when Yuuri is slipping his gifted sword and scabbard into his belt that he spies Victor swallow in that shallow way that betrays a lump in the throat. “Your Highness…?”

“Hm?” Victor peers up from his family’s crest, where it shimmers against Yuuri’s hip. “What is it?”

Yuuri tilts his head at him, innocuous. “Do you have something to tell me?”

“Nothing specific,” Victor says, too quick. His voice is far away. “Just…” He smiles, though it’s a small, doleful thing. “Your hints. You didn’t ask for them today, and I owe you two. Or did you forget?”

Yuuri further situates the sword, the tip clinking against the outside of his boot. “That’s all right. Keep them for next time.”

Those words have a truer smile rising to the prince’s lips. “If you insist.”

“And I do.”

“Then…” He kisses Yuuri, chastely, a hand feather-light above the heart. “Come visit me again.”

Somehow, that—above all else—has a torrid blush rising to the tops of Yuuri's cheeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Do you know how hard it is to talk of war politics when the entire room is imagining what you look like being fucked against a wall?”  
> *cue Victor getting fucked against a wall at the end of the chapter*
> 
> And the award for the most heavy-handed foreshadowing goes to... me! Wow, what an honor! I'd like to thank the academy!
> 
> Honestly, I feel like I just ran a marathon. Please kudos + comment to revive.


	3. Like Moonstone in Your Memories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry belated Christmas and a happy new year! 
> 
> Between starting grad school, a new job, my birthday, the flu (TWICE), zine pieces, and updating other fics, this project really got pushed back. But here it is, at last! Let's start off this year on a good note, yes?

“So I’ve been giving it some thought, and after much careful deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that the best course of action for us right now is for you to sit on my face.”

Yuuri slaps a hand to his mouth just in time to avoid spluttering tea all over the prince’s lovely lounge table. “C-come again?”

“Well, it only makes sense.” Victor smirks into his drink. “You _do_ have the finest ass in the entire kingdom.”

“I—?”

“Yes, you!” Victor laughs. “And I’m the crown prince, so I can say that. In fact, consider it a decree.”

“Your—?”

The prince lifts a hand, as though pantomiming a large banner. “Eros: the finest ass throughout all the land.”

“ _Please_ —“

“Would you like me to sign something? Put my family’s official seal on it?”

“I’d like you to _stop._ ”

Victor sips from his cup, loud and obnoxious. “Your loss.”

Yuuri dabs at his cheek with the corner of a silken handkerchief, glaring unsubtly over the material.

It’s the third or fourth time Yuuri has been invited to _tea_ of all things, and yet, he never seems to get used to it. Social tact has never been one of Victor’s strong suits to begin with, but with each and every suggestion his prince oh-so casually brings up at these affairs, the subject matter is becoming less and less subtle—more _explicit—_ and progressively more difficult to merely brush off.

(By which he means, he’s starting to suspect that Victor might not be kidding.)

Yuuri has only just finished buffing the errant drops out of the lacquer when the door to Victor’s chambers bursts wide open, admitting what appears to be a single guard, a flurry of red and pewter.

Before him, Yuuri watches the prince turn a ghastly white.

“Your Highness, I apologize for the abruptness of my entrance, but there’s a matter in which your attention is—“

She at last lowers the parchment she had been then scanning from before her face, immediately pitching it to the floor upon seeing her charge was not alone and wasting no time in pressing cold steel against the alleged interloper’s throat. “Who are you? How did you get in here?”

Yuuri throws his hands up, even if one still boasts a now-stained handkerchief clenched between his fingers. He shoots a look at Victor from the corner of his eye. “Really? You didn’t lock the door?”

Victor smiles, crookedly. “I forgot…?”

“Are you _serious_ —?”

“Identify yourself, you cur! You’re in the presence of His Royal Highness Crown Prince Victor Nikiforov and his captain of the guard, Mila Babicheva!”

“Uh, listen, Mila—“

“That’s Captain Babicheva to you, rat!”

“’Rat’?”

“Mila, stop this.” Victor reaches across the table, lowering Mila’s sword with fingertips upon the fuller. “He hasn’t done anything wrong. He was invited.”

Despite her obvious confusion, the captain sheaths her weapon. “I don’t recall any visitors coming to call today.”

“There weren’t any—on the record, that is.”

“Your Highness…?”

“ _Ugh_.” Victor’s hand comes to rest upon his forehead. “I should have done this from the very beginning,” he mutters under his breath, evidently three steps ahead of himself and everyone else present. “Fine. Mila!”

The captain jolts to attention. “Yes!”

“Call all the guards. Have them report to the receiving room. I wish to speak with them.”

“All of them, Your Highness?”

“I do recall saying that, yes.”

“Y-yes!” She scampers out of the parlor, chainmail clanking with each descended stair.

“Well—“ Victor rises, stretches. “Shall we go then?”

Yuuri blinks from where he’s still seated. “’We’?”

“Yes, of course.” Victor hoists the other up by the wrist, brushing off nonexistent dust from his shoulders. “You’re the whole reason I’m gathering everyone. We’re going to have ourselves a formal introduction.”

“ _To whom_?” 

* * *

“Guard—“ Victor sweeps his arm over to his immediate right. “—Eros. Eros, the guard.”

It takes approximately half a second for Yuuri to have twenty military-grade weapons surrounding him on all sides.

He’s getting quite tired of holding his hands up today, if he’s being honest.

“At ease,” Victor says, stone-cold, the reaction to which is just as swiftly done.

He clears his throat, happy-go-lucky countenance returning with a flourish. “So this is Eros. You _may_ have heard of him, but disregard any previous orders pertaining to the subject. He’s here as a _guest_ and should be treated as such.”

Murmuring ripples throughout the prince’s guard.

Victor decidedly ignores this. “So then, Eros, I’ll go down the line. You’re acquainted with my captain of course, Mila Babicheva. She’s the toughest knight this court has ever known. Then there’s second-in-command, Georgi Popovich. He’s extremely reliable, if not a bit emotional at times. After that, we have—“

The information flies over Yuuri’s head. Victor seems to know them all: every full name, every position and title, history and background, their strengths and weaknesses. They were all apparently handpicked by the prince himself years ago from new recruits, their ages and personalities attesting to that fact. 

By the end, Yuuri can’t help but be begrudgingly impressed.

“And that’s all of them!” Victor claps his hands, delightedly. “So to reiterate: Eros is a controversial character, but he’s free to come and go as he pleases. Oh, and one more thing!” His eyes narrow into slits of smoldering sapphire. “Don’t breathe a word of this to my father.” He claps again, unnerving smile snapping back into place. “Dismissed!”

The guards shuffle out, but not before shooting furtive glances at Yuuri, as though trying to parse out how and why exactly he was so special.

Truthfully, if Yuuri could find his tongue at the moment, he’d be asking of his prince the same.

“Well… that’s that.” With the closing of the double-doors, Victor turns a look on Yuuri so fond, it has the latter’s knees buckling. “One less thing to worry about, yes?”

“I suppose.” Yuuri swallows, dry-mouthed. “But why…?”

Victor doesn’t answer him—in words—but instead strides across the chamber, tilting Yuuri’s chin up to catch his mouth with his own.

It’s shallow but frantic. _Wrong_ , somehow. Insecure…? The realization doesn’t mesh well with the current image Yuuri has of his prince, like trying to mix water and oil. But the proof is pressed right up against his lips: the dip in Victor’s cupid’s bow that belies the impending formation of a frown.

He trills questioningly in his throat, only to be silenced with a deepening of the kiss, like Victor caught himself. The prince’s lips go lax—whatever tension there previously snapping in half, flying free—and Yuuri is devoured so thoroughly he begins to question his initial assessment of perceived hesitance.

Perhaps, he thinks, he was mistaken.

Victor ends the act by nipping at the shell of his ear, proprietary. Warm air bursts upon the wetted skin when Victor rests his temple there to say, “You haven’t shown me all of you yet, Eros. I want to see it. You’ll show me, won’t you?”

Yuuri is nodding before the query is even finished, taking a handful of the back of the prince’s cloak in a white-knuckled grip. He has no idea what he’s agreeing to, but it hardly matters; he’ll figure it out along the way.

He always does.

He departs after that, phantom pressure lingering on his lips as he, for once, leaves the palace in a civilized manner, ignored completely by guards that take up a sudden interest in the garden or the tapestries or literally anything else.

It makes for a much more pleasant jaunt, that’s for sure.

“You look happy,” Phichit remarks when Yuuri’s made it back safely inside the shop, looking up from a table’s worth of parchment.

“I am,” Yuuri decides, nearly past Phichit before he’s halted by a palm upon the abdomen.

His friend lifts a letter in a familiar hand. “Sorry to ruin your good mood.”

Yuuri doesn’t have to read it to know what it says. But he does.

Oh, but he does.

* * *

“I don’t want you here alone tonight.”

Yuuri flattens himself against the pillar of the upstairs balcony, smothering his breath.

“But there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Nothing to worry about? Sara, please.” Yuuri hears the man deposit his target into a small chest, locking the gem up tight. “That scoundrel Eros is still at large, and you say there’s nothing?”

“His Highness has assured me that the issue is well in hand.” Yuuri can appraise the approximate price for each of the jewels adorning the woman’s fingers, just hearing her clasp her hands. “Besides which, there hasn’t been an incident in a while. Maybe he’s moved on to another city? Another country, even?”

“That’s not a risk I’m willing to take.” A sigh of frustration. “He’s never been known harm anyone before, but if he _dared_ touch you—“

“It’ll be fine.” A lull, a probable soothing touch. “I’m merely watching over it. It will be someone else’s problem come morning.”

“I’m still putting men at every door—“  
  
“As many as you want.” The conversation dulls, transitioning into the hallway.

Which is, of course, Yuuri’s cue to get to work.

Yuuri makes short work of the veranda doors, sliding a thin slice of sheet metal between the lock and mortise. He enters with the slightest of creaks, surveying the immediate surroundings before slipping inside, once again sticking to the outer wall. Gloved fingers glide feather-light across the tops of cabinets, the bottoms of drawers in search of the container, knowing only that it is slight and most probably garnished in velvet, given the lack of a satisfying clink when setting the gem down.

At last, Yuuri uncovers a bureau adjacent to the bed with a locked upper compartment, all but screaming the location of the Star of Caerus. He has it open within the moment, finding the coffer to indeed be present and wastes no time in collecting it.

However, the very instant Yuuri has it in hand, the thin, imperceptible wire wound around it pulls taut; the vase atop the bureau subsequently careens to the floor, shattering into a thousand ugly pieces upon the marble.

The turning of a lock from the hallway lands heavily on Yuuri’s ears.

“Your Grace—!”

_Shit._

Yuuri is at the balcony doors before the guard can even take a single step in, but it’s too late; another two men await him outside, presumably having made their way over from the neighboring promenade, as Yuuri had. They and the first guard make an attempt to corner him, Yuuri slipping past only just, making his way further into the house.

“Don’t let him get away!”

It’s the male voice from earlier, and it’s _close._ Yuuri takes the banister as a child would a hill after a day of fresh-fallen snow, riding the rounded edge of the rail with his outer thigh until he’s made it to the foyer.

He lifts off with much momentum but halts on the tips of his toes upon hearing approaching figures coming in from all sides: the east, the west, the upper level, and most prominently, the front entrance.

Anxiety and adrenaline both have his eyes darting left and right, up and down for somewhere— _anywhere—_ that will hide him, seeing as running is no longer a viable option.

“He went this way!”

Yuuri doesn’t think. He _moves_ , throwing open the cabinet just before the staircase and forcing himself in.

It’s a tight fit—one that has Yuuri’s limbs bent in inadvisable positions, the hilt of the sword Victor had gifted to him pushed up from its scabbard, pressing cruelly into his sternum—but the doors close in their entirety, well and effectively concealing him.

Then the footfalls come closer, and Yuuri forgets to breathe.

There’s much talk all at once, disgruntled, muffled—even more so by the thick lacquer separating them and Yuuri—but words can be made out, especially from the authority, whose voice rings out, crystalline.

“Well, he must have gone _somewhere._ Keep searching! They haven’t spotted him outside, so he must still be nearby.”

“Michele—“

The crowd hushes as a collective as the woman from before voices her opinion: “I think we should enlist the help of His Highness.”

“Sara, we’ll find him soon enough—“  
  
“More help is better, yes? Send someone to the palace. It can’t hurt.”

A sigh, beleaguered. “Fine. As you wish.”

Time moves then in infinities, in bursts. Yuuri’s heart races at each approaching of footsteps when someone passes through the entrance, grip white-knuckled around the gem he’d pilfered, having divested it of its container to run anxious fingers up and down the edges of it.

He nearly cuts himself when he at last hears the heavy entry doors admitting what sounds to be a squadron, one that can, undoubtedly, only belong to one person.

“Your Highness!”

Yuuri risks discovery opening the cabinet door half an inch to see Victor, catching the moment in which the woman from before rushes up to the prince to kiss him on each cheek. “I’m so sorry to have disturbed you in the middle of the night,” she says, in place of a greeting.

Yuuri watches as Victor returns the favor. “That’s quite all right. I take personal interest in this case, after all. And any friend of Mila is a friend of mine.”

“You’re too kind, Your Highness.” She casts her gaze to the bottom of the stairs, a stitch in her brow. “So strange though… We haven’t found any sign of him. It’s almost as though he vanished, but I know that can’t be true.”

“Certainly not.” The prince chuckles. “He’s many things, I’ve heard, but magic isn’t one of them.”

“Then you’ll help us look?”

“Of course. It’s the least I can do.”

“Oh, thank you!”

Victor’s guards fan out, the prince himself striding further into the foyer; his attention flitters here and there, uninterested, almost, but not quite. Furtive, more like. It’s just before the cabinet that he turns his back, resting a forefinger upon his lip in thought.

Well, Yuuri thinks. It’s now or never.

“Hey—“

Victor startles at the voice—a full-bodied thing—and begins to turn, but Yuuri has him in hand by the cloak, kept in place. “ _Please_ don’t move. I beg of you.”

Victor sighs, deeply, but does as asked, staring dutifully ahead. “You certainly ‘beg me’ a lot, don’t you, Eros?” he tries to tease, willing the muscle and sinew in his forearm to relax upon the hilt of his blade, from where he’d nearly drawn it. “I’d rather you’d beg me in a more romantic setting, but I’ll take what I can get.”

“You have to smuggle me out.”

“Oh? And how do you propose I do that?" 

“ _Think of something._ You’re the prince, aren’t you? Just call the investigation off.”

“Too suspicious. We’ll have to be craftier.”

“Then what do suggest?”  
  
Victor inhales a breath through his teeth. “Stay there,” he says, gesturing vaguely behind him. “I’ll be back.”

Reluctantly, Yuuri lets him go—out of sight, disappearing down the hall—and is left to wind himself ever tighter in the cabinet, closing the door fully once more.

It’s an approximate eternity before Yuuri hears of anything, at last two sets of footfalls coming before the cabinet in perfect unison, with military-precision.

There’s a rap upon the door. “Eros? You’re there, aren’t you? It’s Captain Babicheva, if you recall.”

“I do." 

“Then open the door, just a bit.”

Yuuri does, and immediately, a uniform is thrust through the opening by Georgi. “We couldn’t include armor,” he says in apology, “as it’d draw too much attention, but this should suffice. We hope it’s the correct sizing.”

It’s not—it’s tall and broad in all the ways Yuuri is not—which only makes it that much harder to change in the confines of a wardrobe, knocking ankles, wrists against the grain, which prompts unsubtle coughing from Mila and Georgi in an attempt to mask whatever suspicious noises might be coming from where the Crispinos would otherwise keep their cutlery.

When he’s at last got the bulk of material tucked in to his boots and gloves, Yuuri extricates himself from the closet behind Victor’s guards. “What next?”

“Next, we escort you out as quietly as possible.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Yuuri can’t match the pace nor the practiced elegance of Mila and Georgi’s marching, but he tries, valiantly, biting into his lip when the belt of his uniform begins to slide down his hip, nearly catching him around the thighs.

“You three there!”

Mila and Georgi turn on their heels, holding a hand over their respective hearts; Yuuri follows, belatedly, fingers twitching against his chest. “Your Grace, what can I do for you?” Mila asks, gaze respectfully placed dead-ahead, though decidedly not on Michele Crispino, who stalks angrily forward.

“I think you know _exactly_ what you can do for me. Who told you to stop searching? Eros hasn’t been found yet, and I won’t have this burden fall unto Sara.”

“Ah, well, you see—“

“We’re on orders from Prince Victor himself,” Yuuri says, to the shock of everyone, up to and including himself. “His Highness told us to search the perimeter.” He swallows, glancing up, coyly, through his eyelashes. “You wouldn’t have us go against direct orders from His Highness, now would you?”

Michele sputters, stumbling back. “No, don’t be absurd—“

“Then I suggest you let us pass.” Yuuri folds his hands behind his back, unable to hold back a smile from lifting the corners of his lips. “You know His Highness: He gets very testy when he senses incompetence.”

“T-then by all means—“ Michele throws his hand towards the door, in offering. “But report back with anything regarding Eros, understand?”

They communicate their complete understanding, leaving then through the entrance. A carriage greets them in the drive, which Mila and Georgi promptly shove Yuuri into, as though he’s the one being stolen.

“What—?”  
  
“There are guards everywhere. While our men would turn a blind eye, the Crispinos’ would be far less forgiving,” Mila explains, hastily.

“Stay inside until our investigation is concluded,” Georgi instructs. “Only then we will be able to leave without arousing suspicion.”

Loath as Yuuri is to admit it, their argument is sound and leaves little room for debate. So he merely draws the curtains of the coach and sets himself upon one of its many lavish seats, trying best he can not to wear a hole in the floor of the carriage with his anxious leg bouncing.

The night blooms into a blue-pink dawn by the time the prince and his entourage return, an air of quiet humility about them. Subdued. Yuuri supposes they would have to put up that front; after all, even the prince’s elite couldn’t locate the illusive phantom thief Eros, a slight on their reputation indeed.

Victor slams the door upon entering, the coach jolting into motion. “Give it,” he says, contrite, an expectant hand drawn before him.

Yuuri merely blinks at it. “Give what?”

Victor scoffs. “What else? The Star of Caerus. Now give it here.” He motions for the return of it once more, stern.

“Are you _mad_?” Yuuri retrieves the gem—from where he’d stowed in a cinched pocket—and gestures with it sharply. “Do you know how much work I had to go through to get this? You think it’s easy tracking this down? Scaling the Crispino estate? Finding it? Fleeing from the scene?”

“And what a fine job you did of it: fleeing the scene.” Victor crosses one leg over the other, expression pinched with distaste as he surveys the cityscape. “If it hadn’t been for a combination of pure luck and Sara Crispino’s connections, you’d have been found out within the night.” Victor turns his look on Yuuri, severity distorting the features. “Besides which, this puts the Duke and Duchess in a very difficult position, socially. Their family name will wear the stain of this for years to come, never mind me and my own. Had you ever considered that, Phantom Thief Eros? The consequences to your actions?”

Yuuri tastes blood in his mouth, from biting the inside of his cheek. He curls his fingers upon his lap, the Star of Caerus biting through his gloves to the skin. “I don’t have a choice.”

“If not your choice, then whose?”

“You wouldn’t—“

“ _Eros_ —“

“It’s all your fault!”

Horses whinny their displeasure as the carriage is brought to an abrupt halt with the declaration. Victor holds his hand up to stop a storming of the coach, though the rest of him remains frozen but for a growing sense of horror forming in his widening eyes. “What do you mean by that?”

Yuuri groans, burying his free hand in his hair, curling in on himself. “Well, not _your_ fault, per se. Your family’s fault. Your _father’s_ fault. The king had to start that stupid confrontation at the south end of the border, where my family’s inn happens to be. Ever since the occupation, everyone avoids the area like the plague. No one wants to risk life or limb going to visit a modest inn at the south-end if they have to be harassed by military along the way. And the only patrons they do get regularly are soldiers, who demand service without payment, seeing as they are ‘protecting us’ and all.”

“Eros, I… I didn’t—“

“I moved to the capital in hopes of finding a stable source of revenue to send back to them. My friend was generous enough to take me in and give me consistent work as a tailor, but it wasn’t enough. My family was still losing money, despite everything.” He glances up, but he knows not what kind of reaction his prince has to any of this, vision blurred as it is with tears. “So you see, I had no choice. I was driven to thieving. And if you insist still on taking such umbrage with it, I suggest you _do something_ about it rather than criticize me.”

“I… That’s—“

“Well? Can you or can’t you?”

“I… cannot. There’s nothing I can do.”

“Then you have no right to judge.”

Silence. Then Yuuri stands: one hand to the door, the other holding the Star of Caerus between his middle and forefinger. “I’ll walk from here—and I’m taking this with me. I hope you understand, now, why I must.”

Victor says nothing. He only stares, unwaveringly, at his braid from where it’s thrown over his shoulder, embellished with twinkling gems of emerald and garnet. 

Yuuri slams the carriage door behind him, in answer.

* * *

The roses have bloomed since Yuuri last visited: pinks and oranges and bright, vivid reds. The scent has his nose twitching, but as he settles in the clearing of the garden—beside where Victor sits, legs folded demurely underneath him—he finds their stalks a comforting presence, sequestering the both of them under a ceiling of stars.

“I see you took my advice to leave me a note,” Yuuri says, trying to catch Victor’s eye.

Victor sighs, full-bodied, though his gaze doesn’t stray from the sky above him. “It was hardly difficult to find where you live after you let slip your profession.”

“Ah.”

“So? Did you sell it?”

“Yes.”

Victor simply nods, in acceptance.

Yuuri looks to the flowers. “It’s nice to finally get to see your roses. They’re pretty.”

“Thank you.” Victor looks down, wistful. “I’m trying to get blue.”

“Blue?”

“Yes. Blue roses.”

“I don’t think they exist.”

“Not yet, they don’t.” Victor smiles then, in such a way that Yuuri feels as though his very breath is being stolen. “But wouldn’t that be wonderful? To defy the impossible, achieve the improbable? Just to prove to yourself that you can?”

“I suppose it would.”

The stars inch across the horizon, only interrupted by the occasional cricket chirp, the sound of koi circling in their ponds. Just as Yuuri goes to open his mouth, Victor speaks over him:

“My mother was a dancer, you know.”

Yuuri blinks, lips parted.

“Or… perhaps you do not. It’s not a well-known thing, anymore.” Victor draws a finger across the dirt. “She wasn’t royalty. My father came across her in his adolescence, dancing for a living. She was traveling with a group, to anywhere and everywhere that would host them. He fell in love with her, with the way she moved. I think their union was a happy one, but who can say? By the time I was able to think for myself, the marriage had fallen apart.” Victor looks to the south: to where the ocean meets the sky. “She ran away. Left the country. I’m sure she thought nothing of it at the time, knowing well that I would grow up wanting for nothing, being the prince and all. In that regard, she was right.”

Yuuri leans forward, just a touch. “So then, His Majesty—“

“Still looking for her, I think. The occupation at the southern border is just his latest attempt.” He swallows, shallowly. “I am… so sorry, if my father’s selfishness has affected your family in any way.”

Yuuri stares at the farthest star, where it almost meets the earth. “My mother is a wonderful cook.”

“Oh?”

“Probably the best in the entire kingdom, if not the world. Back when the inn was still popular, people used to rave about her.”

“I’ll have to visit sometime then." 

“You do. I think…” Yuuri nibbles at his lip, an errant finger meeting one of Victor’s of its own accord. “I think she’d like you.”

Victor closes the gap, setting his hand—and leaning his head—atop Yuuri’s, beatific smile warm against Yuuri’s crown. “I think I’d like her too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri, basically, this entire chapter:
> 
>  
> 
> Today's gemstone is moonstone: a stone of healing and strong feminine energy.


End file.
